


“Out of Darkness & the Shadow of Death”

by Saighin



Series: Sword of Light [1]
Category: Cursed (TV 2020), Cursed - Thomas Wheeler
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Brief Reference to Bodily Functions/Fluids, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociative Amnesia, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lovingly Repeating Trigger Warning: References Physical & Psychological Torture of a Child, Not Beta Read, Other, Physical Abuse, Religious Fanaticism, Sorry Not Sorry, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:46:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27382153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saighin/pseuds/Saighin
Summary: "Do you love me, Father? Even if I am damned?""You were demon-born. An abomination in the eyes of God. But I spared you from the fire."The Ash Man had hesitantly tried to assure The Green Knight that this suffering would cleanse him, would save his soul.  Just as the Weeping Fey himself had been cleansed.
Relationships: Father Carden & The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)
Series: Sword of Light [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2008171
Comments: 14
Kudos: 11





	“Out of Darkness & the Shadow of Death”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kayabiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayabiter/gifts).



> Dearest readers, I humbly beseech you: PLEASE, know what you're getting into & take heed of the TW tags. I tried not to make descriptions too graphic, but there's no getting around the fact that this origin story character study is completely centered around the torture & brainwashing of a small child (which is why I opted for the "explicit" rating out of an abundance of caution).
> 
> Be the knowledge a Blessing or a Curse, allow me to present my take on the answer to Gawain's question of just how the Ash Man's mind had been so twisted that he could not recognize the difference between kindness & hate.
> 
> (Sooooo, caveat, this is the first work I've ever actually sucked it up & posted for public consumption ;-) And of course, I decided that if I was going to pull my knees up to my chest & yell "cannonball!", I might as well do it blindly not knowing if there's water in pool by posting it completely un-Beta'd, before I lost my nerve :-) All mistakes are mine, have mercy on me please - even though I had none on my character.  
> But, since I'm not sure whether to _thank_ the delightful [Kayabiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayabiter/pseuds/kayabiter) or _blame_ her for encouraging me to start discussing my character perspectives & ideas, I figured I'd just be demented & evil by gifting her with this wee little slice of "dark Daddy-Carden" instead.)

**_“He brought them out of darkness, and the shadow of Death: and broke their bonds asunder.” Psalms 107:14_ **

_Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey_

_Manche, Normandy_

The Red-Robed Man Bloods had kept him locked in a pitch-black windowless stone cell, so small he could neither stand upright nor stretch his body full-length along its floor, for three months.

Deprived of food or water, bereft of light, the way the blond-bearded Man Blood called "Father" intoned solemnly through the door that his damned nature would eternally deprive him of the sustenance and illumination of God's Grace.

Until he'd given up his desperate cries of _‘Áther’_ , calling out for his papa in his Ash Folk's mother tongue. Until he'd given up begging, for his freedom or for food, in the barely familiar Breton and Frankish spoken by the Man Bloods of the towns nearest his hilly inlet village. Until he'd given up his screams of apology, pleas for forgiveness for the crime of his birth, in the few words he had managed to learn these past weeks of their Man Blood Church's holy Latin, his throat bloody and his young voice no more than a hoarse broken whisper. Until, after weeks upon weeks sustained on nothing night and day but that low voice's recitation of his damnation in an unending loop of Breton and Frankish and Latin, his weakening mind and body had begun to devour his memories of anything before and he could no longer recall the rolling lilt of his mother's voice or the sound of his own language.

Until he'd grown so weak that the rats he could always hear scratching toward him in the gaping dark, but could never _see_ to defend against, had thought him close enough to dead start taking bites out of him early. Until he'd been desperate enough to choke down his own throat the roaches that had begun to crawl on his too-still form, desperate enough to eat the still-warm rat he'd managed to keep from eating _him_. Until he'd resorted to drinking rats' blood to wet his cracking throat. Until his desperate thirst had eventually turned to his own piss when the rats were gone. Until, when that cycle had run its course and he'd become too dehydrated to even produce piss to drink in order to reclaim his body's dwindled fluids, there wasn't even enough water left in the child for tears. Until trying to claw his own arms open with ragged nails just in the hope of being able to lap desperately at the wetness it would bring resulted instead in an unhuman wordless animal shriek of feral despair when his thickening blood proved too sluggish to flow.

Until the small Fey boy, orphaned by his slaughtered tribe and stolen from his Gaulic homeland, had dried up and crumbled to dust.

Until he'd been broken.

It had been another three days like that, throat too dry to swallow anymore and cracked lips no longer even offering up blood that he could tongue at where they'd split like old cracked leather. All the while, the deep woeful voice of the bearded priest intoned lowly through the oaken door that such was the absence of His Grace, that such was the price of damnation. Despite the condemning words, in hopeless surrender to his fate the boy had used the last of his fading strength to drag himself up against the door, curling as close as possible to the ever-present voice which had become his only constant, so that when he died he might not feel so frightened and alone.

When the words changed, it took several minutes for the child's sluggish fading mind to register that he'd been asked a question.

"Will you let me save you, my Son?" the warm deep voice asked through the door, a quiet almost pleading tone it had lacked before, the offer somehow both sad and full of promise. "Will you let me guide your damned soul out of the Darkness and to the Light of His Salvation?"

Teetering on the edge of consciousness, the broken boy found his body too weak to shape his mouth to answer, but he felt his heart spike with a pang of desperate dying hope and managed to force out an aching broken mewling sob, both plea and ascent.

The light that reached him, after so long in darkness that he'd forgotten what the world looked like before the cell, was like being granted vision for the first time, spectacular and overwhelming and painful in its intensity. Like a newborn child opening his eyes to the terrifying brightness of the world for the first time after emerging from the darkness of the womb. And like a terrified babe, he'd shrunk back in incomprehension from its terrifying and agonizing brightness, wordless whimpered cries pouring from him. But the priest, framed ethereally by the too-bright light, bent and embraced him soothingly and tucked the boys black-birthmarked face shelteringly into his red frock to shield his eyes from the harshness of the glare. So long without the warmth of touch, the child burrowed weakly into the enfolding arms and helplessly surrendered to the comfort they offered. Crooning assurances, Father swaddled the shivering boy into the folds of his robe and cradled him babe-like to his chest as if his own, lifting him from the dirt and carrying him into his new life of Salvation and Service to the Lord's Will.

After three weeks tending the little one in the priest's own softly lit quarters of the old stone monastery, comforting and consoling him, feeding him by his own hand and selflessly nursing his tiny weakened frame back its former health and strength, devoting his every waking moment to proving his own dedication to the boy's Salvation body and spirit, Father had asked the him to recommit to his willingness to be redeemed. Fortified by such evidence of the benevolence of the man who had so tirelessly tended the every need of his starved body and wiped away the burning tears that traced hotly along his birthmarks when he would wake screaming in the night, he knew the monk's efforts on behalf of his soul to be the only protection between him and an eternal return to the darkness and deprivation of the cell that the kind priest had carried him from. Swallowing his childish fear of the unknown, he turned over his fate to that helpless blind trust, vowing his willingness.

The he first step for the 8 year old child on the road to his Salvation would be surrendering himself to purification of his sins at the hands of the Church, to "burn the infernal corruption" of his "demon-born nature" from him. To cleanse the evil from him with white-hot iron brands formed into the sacred sigils of their Christian God's archangels and other Holy symbols. Though the iron charring mercilessly through his flesh filled his blood with an unfathomable boiling that nearly incinerated all reason and felt as if it would scorch his bones to cinder, the fact that the skin of his small body managed to heal the horrific muscle-deep burns slightly faster than a human's and without visible permanent scarring - his Ash Folk tribe's _living_ flesh, unbeknownst to him, only susceptible to _permanent_ damage from the heat of the green fire unique to the Hidden-touched among his Clan - had been not a blessing but a curse. Deemed "proof" to the Man Blood monks of the child's infernal origin, his demon-born body's rejection of their holiest marks prompted them to apply the brands with even _more_ fervor and frequency. Consequently, rather than occurring over days or weeks, this daily ritual cleansing of the Original Sin of his infernal birth spanned months, until tangible evidence of the devoutness of his conversion could be manifested in some other manner.

After the very first session of purging the taint of his damnation from him, bound beneath their brands splayed and naked like a sacrifice on the altar of the underground chapel, dawning horror of realization took root at the insurmountability of facing this salvation. Father admonished that this transient corporeal agony, debased entirely and unreservedly in his Holy sight here on Earth, was the only manumission from an eternity of such anguish in the hereafter, and he refused to fail his young charge now that he'd set foot upon the Righteous path. Now knowing the agony his spiritual redemption would entail, the child could not curtail his body's desperate struggles against the terror of their repetition, skinny legs kicking out wildly in an attempt to run even once lifted. For the first month, he'd daily had to be physically subdued into the leather bindings by Father and his tonsured brethren. But Father would not leave his side, praying over him – uninterrupted by his screams and sobs at each fresh torment – that Christ the Lord might in his Holy Mercy forgive and raise up this damned creature from the low origins of the Pit which spawned him. And it was Father who would free his broken body from the torturers' bonds each evening, tending his wounds and soothing his tears and rocking him until he would weep himself into an exhausted dreamless death-like sleep.

The second month, each morning when – once stood bare before the torturers' chair or rack or suspended iron manacles – his body would betray him overcome by instinct to escape the coming pain, he'd been given a choice. Father had daily put the decision in his hands, voice as stoically steadfast and firm as the unbreakable sure grip on his frantically fighting arms. He could choose to cease his struggles and submit to being strapped into the chair, if not cooperative than at least no longer combative; or he could be returned to his oubliette cell _permanently_ , to never again know food or touch or the warmth of the sun, abandoned forever by both Man and God as his refusal to be purified would abandon his only chance at absolution. So, every morning, every single morning, he would weepingly force his still-shaking limbs rigid to stop their desperate struggles against the monks' holds, allowing them through his hyperventilating and hitched sobs to guide his wildly trembling wrist into the restraints. Each evening after freeing him, Father would calmly and quietly assure the pain-dazed and shaking child that he was proud of his courage in taking this first small step. Though, he solemnly cautioned, as he himself was just a man - albeit one blessed enough to serve as a tool to work the Lord's Divine Will here on Earth - his own mortal pride would ultimately not be enough to save the child's soul from the flames. Only by devotion earning the notice and pride of God Himself could the boy attain the sure Salvation of His Grace. He prayed at the child's bedside each night that hopefully someday soon he would be brave enough to _truly_ walk the path toward his own redemption and _fully_ show the Lord his commitment, before it was too late.

By the third month, every morning without prompting he wordlessly walked to submit himself to be bound, silent head bent and fine trembling wracking his compliant frame; but only the first day that he prostrated himself thus did any premature tears fall prior to the application of the purifying brands themselves. When, by the end of that month, he'd completely abandoned his previous pleas for his anguish to stop, instead responding to each agony with Christian prayers of devotion or thanks to his torturers for this chance at salvation - all in perfect Latin - the incontrovertible authenticity of his devout transformation could not be contested. Father had praised him through a tear-filled smile and beamed with unconcealed pride, assuring him the Lord saw and approved.

The young black-skinned Brother who had been charged with the insurmountable task of directly facilitating his conversion had proclaimed to have borne witness to the True Miracle of the Mercy and Power of Almighty God in the redemption of even an unworthy abomination such as him. The monk had wept at the joy of being gifted such a vision then subsequently carved out and sewn shut his own equally black eyes, that they may never in future be deceived or corrupted away from the Holy Truth he had seen.

At some point - the boy was distantly aware in a locked away part of his mind - he'd reached his 9th birthday. But that past had dried up and burned to ash, all the young child had been before crumbled desiccated to dust in the dark of a cold stone cell and charred to cinder on the alters of the abbey’s double-nave. His Rebirth into this new life, the security of Father's guidance and his Man Blood Christ-God's delivery from the waking nightmare of endless darkness, were the only reality now for newly christened _L'Ancelot_ "the Servant", (so dubbed by Father and the Red Brethren in the local Frankish tongue, as his new purpose would be to Serve the Lord's Will here on Earth). The small spiced harvest cakes that his mother used to bake to celebrate his Samhain birth, his Ash Clan's ancient native tongue, even his mother's voice as she teasingly lilted his name - when his hair would turn a brilliant shade of gold in the summer sun - _Galath-cadhl_ her little "Glowing Gaul", were mere shadow-echoes now, nothing more than the abstract memories of a dream that fade and are lost after waking.

**Author's Note:**

> (In a day or two, I'll probably upload & link a few annotated "Author's End Notes" in Codex style as a 2nd Chapter to clarify a few details/choices I made here, but for now:  
> Blame genesis for this entirely on being a partial homage to The Weeping Monk's heart-rending shared themes with _Daniel Sharman's_ other two beautiful broken-boy characters. For "Isaac Lahey" whose father used to padlock him into a meat freezer after beating him & for "Troy Otto" whose alcoholic mother would lock the toddler alone a dark basement as punishment for seeking her attention only to be forgotten about for days by his equally drunk father before being let out with only a quiet compliant "I'm sorry Daddy".)
> 
> (P.S. Yes, I know I'm self-crowned Queen of the Run-on Sentence in this work. No, I'm not sorry. Compared to articulating the ritualistic religious mutilation of an 8 year old, needlessly compound sentences are the _least_ of my crimes here.)


End file.
